Lost in the desert

I was reflecting on the tone of my comments in reacting to a variety of articles in the NCR last night. Why are some angry and critical while others appear thoughtful and helpful? To some extent they reflect my mood as I start to write. And I think other writers do the same.

Very often today I feel that we as a Church are wandering in a desert without a compass, angry at our lack of leadership. We look back to the Church of the sixties and seventies, the warm, joyful celebrations, the enthusiastic communities of which we were a part, the larger-than-life shepherds who led us. What has happened, where have they gone?

The metaphor of wandering in the desert drew me to the Israelites led by Moses in the desert of Sinai for forty years. They too started out with high hopes after they had escaped from Egypt and crossed the Red Sea into Sinai. But as they pushed ahead to their ultimate goal, the Promised Land, their leaders seemed to lose their way. They rambled about aimlessly.They grumbled incessantly. They were distracted by a variety of conflicts and just bogged down in the wilderness.

If we substitute "Church" for "Israelites" the story is still the same fifty years after Vatican II. I wonder how the Israelites felt a year or even a month before they stormed Jericho. Does our frustration today match theirs? Apparently the old men who had left Egypt died off before they achieved their final goal. Must the old men, like me, who remember Vatican II, disappear before we reach our goal?

You know it really does not matter. What matters is God's will, not mine.